Cocos Island Costa Rica

C.I.P.I Costa Rica (Research & Information Center for Marine and Wildlife Protection), is the organization that owns and manage this whole movement and web site,which main targets are fighting back  poaching of sharks,turtles, and dolphins in the oceans and preventing deforestation all over  the country as well,together with the preservation of the wildlife at our own Wildlife Sanctuary RAINSONG.Very important achievements have been accomplished in the last 2 years towards these topics as we will explain as follows.

C.I.P.I Costa Rica has worked with its own funds coming from its founder,Ing. Marco Garrido, achieving important goals after 2 years of operation and over $150,000 expended. An operation that was born as a personal project of life, has now grown inmensly in facts and expenses, for which we are looking  strategic alliances,sponsorships or donations that can help us perpetuate the good results we have achieved.

OUR HISTORY

Dedicated to the memory of Jacques Cousteau and his principles, this organization was born as a personal initiative  raised with own funds, to bring a solution to the problematic situation in our country towards local environmental foundations, governmental environmental procedures and overall corruption related to  nature, wildlife and the ocean, derived from the actual status.

Our volunteer Board of Directors is a group of professionals and high executives toward marketing, public  relations, sales, laws and image, assisted by environmental consultors as well.

 The history of all foundations, refuges and environment offices of the government in Costa Rica, have always depended on the governmental policies  toward supervision , surveillance and support, however, the bad management and “lack of money” has turned  our own government in one more enemy of the environment preservation.

We are conformed as an association, independent of the government management but under the environmental laws of Costa Rica, which by the way are pretty good, however disorganization, corruption and personal interests have diminished them to a chaotic  status during the last 20 years, where only individual actions of a few ones have accomplished certain  momentary goals.

OUR PLANS AND TARGETS

 We pretend to set a model of an Environmental Organization based on professional and effective methods of information, education, preservation and protection, showing facts above all regarding the solution of problems.

Many foundations are working in several initiatives towards nature preservation, however, when it comes to real protection they rely on the government and here started the problem 20 years ago.

Our first immediate solution is DEFENSE, accomplished by a national & foreign volunteer force, authorized by the Government and directed by our organization through an Officers Team of  30 persons on charge of the whole volunteers force all over the country. The volunteers can be of all nationalities, most of them students. Law enforced Nature Officers, properly trained and authorized to work together with local authorities will be the first  step to stop poaching, nest hacking ,wild life commerce, pollution and deforestation.

Our medium and long term solutions: Maybe the most important topics of all, is our intention to focus the solutions getting fully involved  with the main social  factors which are probably the origin of the vicious circle.

Continuous improvement solutions toward education and nature awareness, tied up to real job opportunities and training, are probably our best allies to eradicate the problem. The main gap lays not on our lack of honesty and ethics toward the environment, it lays on the lack of involvement of our government towards  the needs of the people, which finally is forced to get hold of any mean of income to provide their families.

Poaching, nest hacking, deforestation, pollution and wildlife illegal commerce are the firsts targets to be eradicated for us. Organic  Agriculture & Farming, Sustainable Tourism, Hand Works, Clothes Printing  and other retail jobs are our solutions to avoid recidivism.

Social Programs for Poachers

We have design several effective internet media tools to communicate our mission and an Eco-Travel Agency to help us for collecting funds, besides asking for donations, offering our Tour planning  and operation services for all those tourists interested in visiting Costa Rica and cooperate with nature. This is the only one Travel Agency in Costa Rica exclusively working for an environmental cause, for which we need a lot of help with a worldwide advertising campaign as well. Besides our web site, our other related media links are:

1) Face Book  page (51,000 fans)       2) Costa Rica Nature & Adventure Tours     3) Face Book Music Channel

4) You Tube Video Channel  (biography of founder included)

 A 5 years old child,representant of the future generations we stand for…witnesses the miracle of life  together with his family…thanks to Rainsong Wildlife Educational Program.

Only one Travel Agency in the country,dedicated exclusively to an environmental cause

Facebook media tools is helping www.cocosisland.cr to reach new fans of Cocos Island in Costa Rica and other countries.

This site was created and developed by the engineer Marco Garrido, who dedicated this domain to his mentor Jacques Ives Cousteau (1910-1997) under Mr. Cousteau´s principles, who always quoted that his mission was aimed   ”…for the survival of the future generations..”

Ing. Marco Garrido did this site and information plattform (as he calls it)  for free and gave it away to the world, as the Cocos Island itself which was declared world ´s patrimony by UNESCO since 1997.

www.cocosisland.cr is maybe the most complete and most accurate web site about the island, because it was made with no commercial interest at all, only for the use of those who really are interested in learning a little bit more about the real truth about the island.

La Nacion, Costa Rica´s most important newspaper has published over 50 or more articles until now, about Cocos Island. This newspaper has a very interesting archive in their instalations where anyone can have access  to all this valuable information.